The Terms of Use were updated yesterday, which you all should know as you all read the bottom of the site daily, right? Anyway, the changes are here. Not that you've ever read them.
Basically, the changes are:
- You must be over 13 to join, and if you aren't of legal age to form a binding contract with Wikia, you're parent and guardian let you.
- You'll follow the Wiki Creation policy - don't block ads, no whitelist/blacklist, release it under free license, blah de blah da.
- Don't mess around with their new media player or try and download the videos.
- You will not use Wikia to go against the Community Guidelines
- The word rule seems to have been replaced by policies and guidelines.
Community guidelines[]
There is a link above. This is a summary.
- be good to each other (that is about a quarter of us blocked)
- look out for each other
- look after ourselves
- respect privacy
- edit (well, looks like most people are out now)
- don't steal peoples content
- Don't do illegal stuff
- Don't pretend to be other people
- No spam (where spam is advertising other services / repeatedly posting stuff)
However, this is my favourite bit of the guidelines, just because of how specific they are.:
Don't post hate speech.[]
*We don't allow homophobic language, ethnic slurs or religious hate. That means no language or content that encourages hatred or violence, or that disparages others on the basis of their race, gender, sexuality, religion, country of origin and so on. *The context of language can matter - what's OK in rap lyrics might not be OK on an image caption. But even casual "I didn't mean it offensively" language can be offensive, so don't do it. And remember, an image of a burning cross might be OK illustrating a history wiki article, but not as your wiki's background image.
Don't post porn, shock images, or explicit descriptions of sex.[]
*On most wikis, this includes nudity (including bare breasts and butts). Artistic nudity may be allowed - for example a classical painting, or a small amount of nudity from a game screenshot. Medical or educational wikis may also have some nudity. But that nudity should not be the focus of the wiki, nor should it be excessively explicit. *If you aren't sure if an image is acceptable or not, there are two questions: Is the nudity in an appropriate context? For example, an image of breasts on the Breast Cancer Wiki would be in an appropriate context, the same image on a wiki about iCarly would not. And, is the image intended to be sexual, or to arouse? Or to put it in simpler terms, is it just fap fodder? *For text, content that just mentions characters have sex is likely to be OK. But content that describes exactly how they have sex, is not. Content that describes violent or non-consensual sex is expressly prohibited. *If your topic means that more nudity or adult language is necessary, we may add a content warning page to your wiki. This page is shown to all visitors before they can view the site, to let them know there are dragons ahead. Wikis with content warnings still need to avoid pornography and other explicit content, but have a bit more wiggle room on nudity and other borderline areas. *In the other direction, wikis about young people’s topics (like cartoons directed at young kids) are likely to get less tolerance for nudity and similar content. This includes Harry Potter porn.
How many people have been posting Harry Potter porn and other "fap fodder" to warrant such a specific clause? More importantly, the term "fap fodder" makes me laugh.